Yearly Archives: 2012

Researchers from Columbia University and the Institute of Neurosciences in Barcelona assessed cortisol levels in 33 patients at clinical high risk of psychosis. Cortisol...

Recent Review of Environmental Risk Factors for Schizophrenia from Fuller Seminary on Vimeo. Recent Review of Environmental Risk Factors for Schizophrenia From the 2012 Symposium...

An international team of researchers (including Irving Kirsch) found in a review "of 62 pivotal antidepressant trials consisting of data from 13,802 depressed patients"...

Dr. Peter Breggin's book Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and Families is meant for prescribers, therapists, patients and their families who want...

An international team of researchers identified all drug trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov between 2006 and 2011 and tracked the resulting publications, finding that although...

Canadian researchers find that 31 people with first-episode schizophrenia diagnoses were as happy as 29 controls, according to a self-reported questionnaire measuring happiness, life...

The U.K.'s Guardian writes today that "the proposal by the American Psychiatric Association to create a new illness – prolonged grief disorder – and...

The Washington Post profiles Daniel Amen, "the most popular psychiatrist in America," who claims in copious books, DVDs, television and speaking engagements to be...

A federal appeals court has reversed a lower court's summary judgment in favor of Eli Lilly,   allowing the parents of a South Dakota...

When it awarded yet another multimillion-dollar grant to Charles Nemeroff, a key figure in the controversy over conflicts of interest involving pharmaceutical research, U.S....

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)'s Methodology Committee released a report dated July 23, 2012, calling for "Standards for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research."  In a...

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced the Trial and Experimental Studies Transparency (TEST) Act into congress on August 2, 2012; a bill aimed at closing...

Film by Apama Sanyal "Schizophrenia. It may be one word, but it immediately conjures up multiple connotations - mad, incurable, violent, suicidal, chemical imbalances, crazy,...

In Medicine there’s a saying “if you hear hoofbeats, don’t look for zebras.” It’s a reference to the wisdom of looking for the most likely explanations when making a diagnosis rather than looking for those that are rare and unusual. Hoofbeats are of course more likely to be the common horse than the rare zebra. My encounters with New Zealand’s pharmacovigilance system over the past four years have been akin to a safari, where I have witnessed scientists involved in pharmacovigilance and medicines regulators wildly hunting zebras while a rather large and obvious horse was standing on their toes.

There are two main problems with the term "medical model." First, it automatically frames the debate in the terms of the oppressor, and secondly, it's confusing. Many people in our community say "medical model" when we mean, "The idea that something wrong in my brain caused my emotional suffering." So why not just use a term that says this? When we say "Disease Model" we can clarify exactly what we are against. With just one word changed we can say we do not believe that a mental "disease" came from nowhere to put us out of action.

Nineteen defective drug product liability cases against Prizer have been filed in West Virginia state court by mothers alleging that their children suffered from...

Olive Sacks reflects on the brain's disposition to see or hear things. Related Item: Q&A with Oliver Sacks: Hallucinations, neurological curiosities and a passion for...

Researchers from Tufts and Harvard find in a review of 233 medical charts of psychiatrically hospitalized youth at three points in time (1991, 1998...

The editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, in a comment on Morrison et al.'s "Antipsychotics: is it Time to Introduce Patient Choice," announces...

Researchers at the University of Central Florida, saying "there are relatively few existing studies examining neuropsychological functioning in social phobia," found no difference across...

Researchers from Harvard and the University of Melbourne identified physicians and scientists who had financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies named as defendants in U.S....

Psychiatric survivors know that U.S. law does not protect our rights under the CRPD and needs to be changed; it is also contrary to human rights principles for any country to assert that its own law represents the limit of its treaty obligations.

In addition to the increased risk of respiratory and heart troubles known to accompany SSRI use during pregnancy, SSRIs have been linked to an...

Researchers from Columbia University and other New York institutions found a dramatically increasing use of antipsychotics to treat ADHD and other behavioral problems in...

Beginning in the 1990s, a number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies began to set up bioethics advisory boards, ostensibly to obtain guidance about controversial ethical issues. Over the years, the ties between industry and bioethics have gradually grown closer, with companies setting up endowed chairs and hiring bioethics consultants. Yet very little is known about how bioethics advisory boards work. What exactly is their purpose? Do they prevent ethical wrongdoing, or do they provide ethical cover?